Confluence database: cannot copy values with view rights

[Ine]

How can I allow users with read-only (view) rights to copy-paste values from my database cells? 

Use-case: Data in the database can only be added/edited by a few people in order to guarantee data quality. However, other teams should be able to consult and use this data; they should be able to copy values without being able to edit the data in the database.

Currently, the only workaround I found was to export the database to an CSV, however, as tags are used (and these are also comma-separated in the file) their is no delimiter that can be used to retrieve the data in a logic way. Moreover, when exporting, some special characters get lost as well, e.g., "é" is exported as "é". 

Can a copy functionality be added? Or is there a workaround to fix this issue (without having to give everyone edit-rights)?

[Tomislav Tobijas]

Hi @Ine ,

You could set restrictions on the database so only a couple of people (or a specific group) have edit permissions, while everyone else has view permissions.

I've just tested this and it seems that if users have view-only permission, they will still be able to copy values from your database. There's no right-click option, but I've used CTRL + C on Windows, and it worked > I've tried copying it to another Confluence page, database, and even Excel, and it worked every time. 

Cheers,
Tobi

[Ine]

Hi Tobi

I can indeed change the rights, but users with view-only permissions are not able to copy-paste data; nor via right-click, nor via CTRL+C and CTRL+V.

Only users with edit-rights are allowed to select and copy-paste.

Screenshot showing DB in view-only mode:

I tested on Windows 11: Google Chrome Version 138.0.7204.169 and Microsoft Edge Version 140.0.3485.66.

Kind regards
Ine

[Tomislav Tobijas]

Interesting @Ine... 🤔

Right-click doesn't work for sure, but CTRL+C should. There's no way to disable keyboard shortcuts on a cloud instance. 

At this point, I'd probably point you out to Atlassian Support. If you give their team access, they can probably take a look at what's going on in the backend. I'd also discuss a potential feature request about adding a copy option to the right-click when users don't have edit permissions.